Twitter suspends accounts sharing live locations, including the tracker of Elon Musk's private jet

Twitter Inc. said it will suspend accounts dedicated to sharing someone’s live location, after one account in particular had gained traction for tracking the private jet of Elon Musk.

Twitter Inc. said it will suspend accounts dedicated to sharing someone’s live location, after one account in particular had gained traction for tracking the private jet of Elon Musk.

Twitter Inc. said it will suspend accounts dedicated to sharing someone’s live location, after one account in particular had gained traction for tracking the private jet of Elon Musk, the social-media giant’s new owner.

A message Wednesday morning on the @ElonJet account, operated by Jack Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida, said the account was suspended for violating Twitter’s rules. The account had about 500,000 followers.

“Well it appears @ElonJet is suspended,” Mr. Sweeney said in a tweet on his personal account before it also was suspended. Twitter also suspended several other accounts he ran that tracked the flights of public figures.

The Elon Musk Private Jet in the private Jet area at Adelaide Airport.

Mr. Musk on Wednesday said “Real-time posting of someone else’s location violates doxxing policy, but delayed posting of locations are ok.”

He later claimed his family had been endangered and said he was pursuing the matter further. Mr. Musk also said Twitter would block accounts that post links to sites with real-time location information.

Mr. Sweeney didn’t immediately respond to the request for comment about the allegation.

The @ElonJet account returned to Twitter on Wednesday night and pressed Mr. Musk for clarity about how long that delay would need to be. It was later suspended, again.

Twitter offered updated guidance on its website about the sharing of private or live location information.

“If your account is dedicated to sharing someone’s live location, your account will be automatically suspended,” it said.

The company further laid out its policy in a series of tweets Wednesday night, telling users they could still share their own live location but couldn’t share the same-day location of others. The company said location information related to a public event, such as a concert, wouldn’t violate the policy.

Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The move represented an about-face for Mr. Musk, a self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist, who has implemented an unusual management style since he bought Twitter for $44 billion in October. He has fired half his staff and delayed product rollouts.

He also had previously said he specifically wouldn’t suspend the @ElonJet account.

“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Mr. Musk said in a tweet last month.

The move represented an about-face for Mr. Musk, a self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist, who has implemented an unusual management style since he bought Twitter for $44 billion in October.

The automated account tracking Mr. Musk’s private jet used public data from plane transponders that log longitude, latitude and altitude, Mr. Sweeney, in 2020, created an algorithm that calculates the whereabouts of a private jet belonging to Mr. Musk.

Mr. Sweeney said in an interview before Mr. Musk’s Wednesday tweet that the suspension caught him off guard because of Mr. Musk’s previous comments. Mr. Sweeney said he thinks the suspension will result in bad publicity for Mr. Musk, given his views on free speech.

“They are going to say he’s a hypocrite,” Mr. Sweeney said.

Mr. Sweeney said it was still unclear to him why @ElonJet was suspended.

“It just shows they can play the rules how they want,” Mr. Sweeney said.

Mr. Sweeney also ran automated Twitter accounts tracking planes owned by Russian oligarchs and aircraft associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The @PutinJet and @RUOligarchJets accounts, which were created after Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year, were also suspended.

Twitter also suspended @CelebJets, an account that was run by Mr. Sweeney that tracked the jets of celebrities.

Mr. Sweeney said all of his accounts were permanently suspended. On the social-media site Mastodon, Mr. Sweeney posted a screenshot of his personal Twitter account showing how he was suspended for violating rules against platform manipulation and spam.

Jack Sweeney’s @ElonJet Twitter account had about 500,000 followers at the time of its suspension.

He said he would continue to run similar accounts tracking Mr. Musk’s jet on Instagram, Facebook and Telegram. He plans to launch a similar account on Mastodon as well, he said.

The @ElonJet account has long rankled Mr. Musk. Mr. Sweeney previously said Mr. Musk asked him in November 2021 to shut down the @ElonJet account. 

Mr. Sweeney said Mr. Musk offered him $5,000 to close the account, according to screenshots of the conversation Mr. Sweeney shared with The Wall Street Journal, which couldn’t independently verify their authenticity. 

He countered and asked Mr. Musk for $50,000 and later an internship, Mr. Sweeney said. Mr. Musk blocked him on social media in January, Mr. Sweeney said. 

In an interview with the Journal in February, Mr. Sweeney said he would take the account down in exchange for a Tesla.

On Saturday, Mr. Sweeney said on Twitter that an anonymous Twitter employee told him earlier this month that the company was restricting the visibility of the @ElonJet account. By Monday, Mr. Sweeney said all the restrictions appeared to be lifted on the account.